Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Those of you who've been around for a while probably know that a common response to Randy's comics is "this would have been a lot better if it wasn't trying to be a comic." It's often just Randy puzzling out some problem or other, and in the end he tries to shoehorn in a joke or something and it just makes it annoying. We eventually started calling this concept Randall Munroe's Illustrated Picto-Blag, and assumed he would never actually do it.

This is basically that. There are two of them up so far: one about throwing a baseball at the speed of light, and one about guessing on the SAT. Predictably, the one about the baseball is better, but here's the thing: they're both pretty good. I mean, it's nothing to write home about, but it's something I can see being an entertaining read. He's doing them once a week.

Maybe he'll eventually give up on comics and the world will be a better place!

Rob, you're a fucking idiot. The baseball one was awful. "I looked up about what happens when stuff moves really fast and now, in a freshman-worthy feat of plagiarism, I'm going to rephrase all the ideas without citation and add some bullshit of my own. Then draw some mushroom clouds because LOL SCIENCE = EXPLOSIONS."

With a comic you at least have the weapon of brevity to act as a shield against triviality of content. what-if appears to be what happens when you put a 16 year old girl's stream-of-consciousness generator into the mind of a mediocre physics undergrad.

The SAT one is wrong for several reasons. A "perfect score" is just a 2400. It doesn't mean getting every question correct. If everyone guessed randomly, their answers would correlate with the correct answers in a Gaussian distribution. Calculating how many of those would be in the score band sufficient to be scaled to 2400 would involve kind-of college math, instead of high school math, so Randy can't be asked to do that.

Also, leaving questions blank does not lose you points. Wrong answers lose points. Not answering at all neither gains nor loses points. Since Randy is obsessed with high school even now, you'd think he would know that.

I'm no physics specialist, but don't the particles from the original air-to-ball fusion reactions trigger additional fusion reactions, which in turn shoot off more particles? From what I understand, this event uses the mass of nigh unto all the air in the stadium to create the explosion.

No, I don't think it's possible for the fusion to consume all the air in the stadium. If it did, the chain reaction would probably keep going and ignite the entire atmosphere. Since this can't happen (although there were much greater minds who thought the first atomic bomb test would do this, seriously, a guy with a nobel fucking prize got this wrong), I'm assuming it's mostly the mass of the baseball.

Significant figures apply only to experimentally measured data. One can safely assume that the regulation baseball weight is specified to be 5 oz, without error bars: i.e. 5.000 oz. The point of not including extra signficiant figures would be to be conservative about the precision with which the quantity is known. For example, a 5.9 ounce baseball would weigh something in the neighborhood of .17 kg, which is wrong. However, though it is not included, it is a reasonable assumption that the weight of a baseball is defined to several decimal places (that is, it is NOT 5.9 ounces, or anywhere close), and in fact verified by more careful measurement. Given the anal nerdiness of baseball regulations, I am sure they do not just stick it on a 1 ounce precision meat scale. Determining the mass of the ball to .001 ounces may be a little much, but certainly to .1 or maybe even .01, with the last digit as we all know, being estimated by the experimenter

8:40, ALTF is afaicr a medical doctor. In all my years I have never found a doctor to be adequately numerate. This is unfortunate because it is unusual to find a practising doctor who does not believe that they have adequate ability in everything.

When a site becomes ad-supported you know that it's shit. The reason is simple: anyone who supports the concept of commercial advertising must have such a broken worldview that everything they say is going to be horribly wrong.

It's a lot like trusting a Holocaust denier to become President/PM - sure, they may try their very best not to come out in campaigning with the message that THE JEWS ARE INVOLVED IN A WORLD BANKING CONSPIRACY AND THE HOLOHOAX WAS A COVER-UP TO GAIN SYMPATHY but you just know that, having gained the seat of power, they are going to slip some Jew-killing somewhere into their term of office. It'd be irresistible - like being a TSA scanner officer or a gymnastics judge and not jacking off at least once under the desk.

They rely on the comic as their source of income. They need the Kickstarter to reimburse the total projected income that would have been provided by ads for the totality of their future plus the cost of the tier rewards. What they may be forgetting is that the tax office is going to have a field day if they get that money all at once.

Anyway, if the top stretchgoal was the permanent closure of Penny Arcade, the creators of the site running off with the money never to share their banality with the public ever again, I would donate substantially to the cause. I'm that bad with my money.

Note to Randall: same goes for you if you ever started such a campaign, buddy.

that's a really dumb way to spend that much on advertising. They've got, what, 90,000 followers each? sounds like a lot, but some of those will have RTs turned off, many more will ignore them, many of them will be bots, etc. tweets from people with 1 million plus followers can have an effect but even then it's hard to guarantee it will be a worthwhile one. you could buy loads of much better advertising for that.

I think I'd spend 2 x $500 to get them each to confess to kiddiefiddling and/or murder. In an acrostic or something. That would be worth it. Unfortunately I don't have Randall's genius when it comes to wordplay.

so, I'm actually surprised at how slowly this is raising money. maybe it's because the funding goal is so ridiculously high, but given Penny-Arcade's vast army of followers I expected them to at least reach their funding goal by now. I'm guessing it's because they are basically offering absolute fuck-all for most of the accessible price-points. a digital download of a book of comics which are available online for $25? that's a little boring.

pretty much every other big kickstarter campaign out there offers/offered something at just about every level (sometimes the $1 and $5 level are left out, depending on the nature of the project). and by 'something' I mean something tangible: a digital download, a physical copy, and etc.

most kickstarter projects are a chance to preorder something cool. the penny-arcade one is just them saying 'hey, if you're willing to give us money, we won't say no.' I'm not necessarily opposed to this sort of thing, but I wish they'd do something cool with it. it looks like people aren't as enthused about it as they are for other kickstarters, also.

i might be wrong, of course. i always feel like most kickstarter campaigns are like anything else: there's a rush of enthusiasm at the beginning, then a slow trickle, and maybe a small rush of enthusiasm at the end. but either way, when this one inevitably reaches its funding goal (only 30k short as of this writing) it won't be nearly as exciting as when AFP made a million on her new album, or when various other webcomics have run successful campaigns. it will be proof that someone with enough fans online can basically get money without doing anything at all.

@weaselsoup: Every time someone says "X cuts out the middleman!", where X is typically Amazon or eBay or iTunes or Kickstarter or whatever, I want to kick them in the genitalia and point out that they should be grateful that my response omitted a kick in the genitalia.

anon, indeed. i'm looking forward to the inevitable massive scam that makes a million and then sends everyone a 'digital download' (as opposed to what other kind of download?' of a picture of a horse's arse with 'hahahaha' scrawled on it

@8:49 The issue with Kickstarter "cutting out the middleman" isn't about the middleman's fees, it's about publishers getting to arbitrate what they release on the basis of market trends. Crowd funding has given a chance to a lot of niche projects that would never have been funded otherwise. At least, not without the creator either compromising on his/her vision or struggling under the burden of a hefty loan.

Of course, with Penny Arcade being long been established as an endeavour far more successful than it ever deserved to be, this doesn't apply to them at all.

Of course, this is the degenerate case where the investors end up with no proprietary interest in an on-going concern, merely a t-shirt/Digital Download/whatever.

So my first paragraph should have said "you're talking like religions haven't existed for millennia".

Not that that is new to the Interweb. The UK's first straight commercial ISP, Demon Internet, was started up on the condition that a couple of hundred people pay a year's subscription in advance. It did receive some external investment, but this was in the time before people could bullshit-inflate their costs to passive moron consumers. So the level of funding required was quite reasonable for such a pioneering service.

I'll have a billion dollars for my forthcoming port of Angry Birds to the Amiga now, please.

No I'm not. I wasn't using the term "crowd funding" as a synonym for "Kickstarter." The benefit of Kickstarter specifically as opposed to similar methods is exposure, a familiar brand name that people feel they can trust to hold their credit card number without making a charge unless the minimum funding goal is reached, and ease of use for project creators who have little real business acumen (and so have a good chance of ultimately blowing the money, but that's another issue.) None of this stuff has anything to do with cutting out middlemen so I wasn't able to mention them.

There are plenty of stupid projects being funded through it, but Wasteland 2 would never have gone into production without it, so it's a-OK in my book.

@3:38, "X wouldn't have happened without Y" is one of the most tedious arguments for capitalist hero-worship. X may have found a better way of happening without Y.

As to "holding your credit card number", wtf? Why can't people make a pledge and, if the "minimum goal" is reached, then be asked to pay up? If people are really interested in committing their money and not making foolish spur-of-the-moment decisions which they can't change, then that would surely work. This glorified escrow service appears to be worse than an escrow service.

5:27, kinda annoying when everyone in a room is against you, isn't it? You have a religious devotion to some Thing but people keep pointing out the flaws. And when you can't argue your case, you tell everyone who criticises your Thing that they must be stupid. After all, how could anyone smart (or average, even) not have an equal admiration for your Thing?

No, 12:21, I know you're thick because of your leap of logic that convinces you I have some sort of devotion to Kickstarter. I have made one pledge on Kickstarter ever. Its existence doesn't matter to me. But simply from the fact that I'm unconvinced by the severity of your contempt you figure me to be kneeling before an altar. You'll probably grow out of it though, so whatever.

I came to this place looking for relief from the elitist, nerd-pandering, circle-jerking hive-mind that xkcd and its fanbase have become. What I've found has been repetitive, unfunny memes and copypastas, snobbish elitism, and the same kind of "look-at-me, look-at-me" attitude that I saw on the xkcd forums, except dressed up in offensive statements rather than "geeky" references. The whole experience felt uncomfortably familiar. You have more in common with the xkcd-fen than you think.

I especially find it hilarious how all of you are CONSTANTLY falling over yourselves to prove that you're the most SHOCKING and UNCARING commenter of them all. After awhile, it just starts to get sad. What's the point of any of it?

There are legitimate points of criticism in these comment threads, don't get me wrong - they're the only reason I keep coming back here - but the bad far outweighs the good here. Just my two cents.

I came to this thread looking for relief from the elitist, nerd-pandering, circle-jerking hive-mind that xkcdsucks and its fanbase have become. What I've found has been repetitive, unfunny memes and copypastas, snobbish elitism, and the same kind of "look-at-me, look-at-me" attitude that I saw on other xkcdsucks threads, except dressed up in cookie-cutter meta-criticism rather than offensive statements. The whole experience felt uncomfortably familiar. You have more in common with the xkcdsucks-fen than you think.

I especially find it hilarious how 9:59 is CONSTANTLY falling over himself to prove that he's the most HIGH-HORSE-RIDING commenter of them all. After awhile, it just starts to get sad. What's the point of any of it?

There are legitimate points of criticism in 9:59, don't get me wrong - it's the only reason I am responding - but the bad far outweighs the good here. Just my two cents.

I don't see how anyone can take this blog seriously since Carl left. Or at least since Rob started posting these one-liner embarrassments in place of reviews. This opinions of this blog used to come from a salient artistic position/taste, even when I disagreed with Carl or guest posters, I could follow their reasoning.

You've abandoned that. You assigning comics arbitrary grades with zero explanation, seemingly for no other reason than you feel obligated to say they're bad. There's no logic anymore. Good art, poor art, topical joke, outdated joke, geek reference, historical reference, clever pun, paraprosdokian, it doesn't matter, Rob will say it sucks, and it's up to the commenters to argue for him.

For a blog that's accused Randall of laziness so often, it's a remarkably lazy system.

you know the first time you posted this i was like 'man this comment is boring' but then the second time i was like 'holy shit he's right i'm going to start posting real reviews now, nobody has ever called me lazy before'

Rob has only said like a million times that the only reason he posts "reviews" at all is to provide a framework for the comments threads. If they're shitty (which I'm not arguing with) it's because they're not supposed to make up the bulk of the content anyway.

yeah basicallyi mean, i occasionally put a modicum of effort into saying something but i have no more fucks to giveit is, however, fascinating to see how many people still complain about the quality of the reviews when it's really obvious how little i care about them

Fucking hell Rob, the quality of your defence of the quality of your reviews has really gone downhill over the past six months. Put a bit of effort in or I'll stop masturbating to that revolting avatar image you use for your blogger account.

I think it's great how we all talk about stuff and pretend like we have valid opinions when 20 years ago we were all watching Ren and Stimpy. At what point, exactly, did we decide it's okay to start acting like we're grown up?

Randall lives in an alternate universe. As in our own universe, domain registrars don't simply hand out .gov, .mil or .edu addresses to anyone. Unlike our reality, the registrars apply equally stringent standards to .com and .org addresses. You need to submit a corporate charter to receive a .com or be a recognized 501c3 to get a .org. The government requires all content on websites with these TLDs to be verified by the fact-checkers at Wikimedia LLC. In this reality, Geocities is the largest internet company (having bought out Google and Yahoo). Geocities has also positioned themselves as the exclusive registrar for the .net TLD. They hand these .net addresses out like candy; absent the strict fact-checking standards for the other TLDs, .net addresses are known for hosting sites with questionable content.

He means that the websites are so old that they're from the early days of the modern internet when .net TLDs were associated with off-the-chain, fringe ideas and general coolness--a phenomenon that was dead by 2002 at the latest.

I don't know about you guys but I think Randall nailed this one. I especially like how he has the guy yelling "sploosh" as he comes down the slide. That's the best part of water sliding in my opinion, the yelling of 'sploosh' at the end.

Wait, isn't there like this huge buffer zone where if you score above this many right answers on the SAT, you get an 800 even if you didn't get everything right? You don't NEED to get every question to ace the SAT, right?

SAT-style tests are a stupid way of measuring anything, and getting everything "right" is little more than a measure of how unimaginative you are when it comes to choosing between alternatives.

When I did those sorts of tests before college, I got excellent marks. A couple of mathematics degrees later, I do worse, because what were then less obvious alternatives now seem equally obvious to me, and it becomes a matter of guessing the limitations of the examiner. I can understand how a child genius would do quite badly at that sort of test.

lol at peoples hilariously conspicuous attempts at casually letting slip that they got 800s. "why yes i do agree koalas are the cuddliest of bears, i remember getting that question on the SAT i scored 800 on but it totes wasnt a big deal its just that you brought it up is all."

11:39. I know, it's pathetic. When I was at MIT, some idiot would try to brag about his SAT score and we'd be all like, of course you got a perfect score on that silly test, everybody here did. Show us something impressive.

Yeah, I remember visiting MIT before receiving an offer to study the Cambridge maths tripos.

Unlike you guys I didn't do very well at the SATs. But I didn't need to as I was already published and had won various national maths competitions. Unlike my achievements, the SAT doesn't really measure creativity or talent, and a college which takes any notice of SAT scores is going to miss out on a lot of excellent people whose ability lies further than robotic multiple choice.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.